Presentation/Proposal Title
“’The Knack of Flying’: One Tutor’s Story of Coordinating Two Community Writing Centers”
Type of Presentation/Proposal
Individual Presentation or Paper
Start Date
6-4-2019 11:15 AM
End Date
6-4-2019 12:15 PM
Keywords
Coordinator, Community Writing Centers, Narrative
Description
Rhetoric of Respect, Tiffany Rousculp (2014), founder of the Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center, notes, “Engaging within a rhetoric of respect draws In attention to how we use language in relation to others: how we name and classify, how we collaborate, and how we problem-solve.” While this concept is familiar to most of us in the field of writing center work, we learn this lesson again when we engage with tutoring writing in the larger community: how words shape our experiences, and those around us, in powerful ways.
This presenter will explore how she has worked to classify, collaborate, and problem-solve during her role for the past two years as the coordinator of two site-based community writing centers in Michigan, the Bay Community Writing Center and the Saginaw Community Writing Center, both supported through our regional university writing center. Specifically, she will explore some of the challenges – and successes—she experienced over the lifetime of the centers, examining the role of advertising the work of these centers, creating partnerships with various community organizations, and tutoring people of different ages, backgrounds, and experiences outside of the university setting. The audience will learn about the underlying ideas of community writing centers through her personal narrative, where she has learned, as Ford says in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “The knack of flying … is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
“’The Knack of Flying’: One Tutor’s Story of Coordinating Two Community Writing Centers”
M2320
Rhetoric of Respect, Tiffany Rousculp (2014), founder of the Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center, notes, “Engaging within a rhetoric of respect draws In attention to how we use language in relation to others: how we name and classify, how we collaborate, and how we problem-solve.” While this concept is familiar to most of us in the field of writing center work, we learn this lesson again when we engage with tutoring writing in the larger community: how words shape our experiences, and those around us, in powerful ways.
This presenter will explore how she has worked to classify, collaborate, and problem-solve during her role for the past two years as the coordinator of two site-based community writing centers in Michigan, the Bay Community Writing Center and the Saginaw Community Writing Center, both supported through our regional university writing center. Specifically, she will explore some of the challenges – and successes—she experienced over the lifetime of the centers, examining the role of advertising the work of these centers, creating partnerships with various community organizations, and tutoring people of different ages, backgrounds, and experiences outside of the university setting. The audience will learn about the underlying ideas of community writing centers through her personal narrative, where she has learned, as Ford says in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “The knack of flying … is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
